Google's Pixel 3 Will Be Radical New Concept

Last week’s Google IO demonstrated a clear vision for the Pixel 3 and beyond: Google wants you to use your phone less.

I don’t just mean fighting smartphone addiction for your personal well being, which I’ll touch on later. Rather, the granular level of automation that Google is adding to its devices will result in less interaction.

There are almost too many new features in both Google Assistant and Android P to list here, but the fact that every announcement at IO was prefaced with ‘machine learning’ tells you everything you need to know about Google’s ambitions.

Take Android P’s newest functions “Actions” and “Slices” which, in essence, reduce the amount of interaction needed to perform a particular task. For example, with Slices, searching your phone for the Uber app will bring up the functionality to order a cab without opening the app. Actions on the other hand will provide content from apps based on your previous behaviour - if you listen to music at a particular time, Google will offer up the app and functionality without prompt.

It’s simple, but indicative of Google’s vision. Fewer taps, less effort and reduced screen time. Years of complex machine learning research has been boiled down into the phrase ‘let me get that for you’.

The roll call of similar updates have the same result too. Your Match on Google Maps reduces restaurant research, adaptive battery and adaptive brightness eliminates endlessly toggling the settings. Routines, Google lens, clearer Google Maps directions and Google Duplex, which can call up restaurants and make appointments for you in a deceptive but genuine-sounding human voice, are all part of the automation package too.